


Thinnest Edge

by furiosity



Series: Short Precarious Anecdote Month [17]
Category: K (Anime)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-17
Updated: 2012-11-17
Packaged: 2017-11-18 22:14:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/565855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/furiosity/pseuds/furiosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lightning can spark a fire, but a fire can only burn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thinnest Edge

Dealing with Munakata is like riding upon an ice floe: he is tranquil, unyielding, cold.

Take one wrong step and you'll fall on your ass. Munakata will just stand there and gaze at you with an expression that betrays a deep confusion as to why you're even alive in the first place.

"What's this? The Red King all alone, without an escort, in this part of town?"

Munakata's voice has always done strange things to Mikoto's insides. Their first contact was over the phone, when Munakata called his secret, private line -- just to demonstrate that being the Red King didn't make him either untouchable or inviolable. His voice carried through digital space like distant thunder. Now it's thunder just around the corner, ready to strike fear into any pitiful little children not smart enough to fall asleep before the storm.

Mikoto draws deep on his cigarette, exhales into the crisp air, flicks away ashes. "Worry about yourself. Someone might pick your pocket, Highness." Munakata's audacity in suggesting he, the Red King, might not be safe on his own turf, is nothing new, though still irritating.

Munakata chuckles, so softly it's barely on the edge of a sharply drawn breath. He's quick to smile but never laughs; Mikoto always wonders what that might sound like. "Thank you for your kind concern, as always."

The street is dark; a minor gang that operates nearby makes a lively business selling the cadmium photoresistors out of the street lights to the laser-warfare geeks in posh uptown. If Mikoto didn't know that voice so well, he wouldn't be able to tell he was facing Munakata Reisi and not some random SCEPTER4 lackey: the dark shadow that he makes in the gloom only shows a vague outline of that iconic uniform replete with the ever-present weapon.

In this darkness, where he cannot see Munakata's eyes or the shape of his mouth, Mikoto feels safer to say, "So, did you make up your mind?"

It is quiet but for the thin _reeeeeeeeeee_ of someone's external air conditioner far above their heads. Then an engine roars into life somewhere down the block, triggering an avalanche of sounds: breaking glass, a woman's angry shout, a firecracker leaping into the starless sky, a startled cat.

This city sleeps uneasy.

"My answer is no," Munakata says finally, and his sabre clinks as he turns to leave. "Take care, now. We wouldn't want you to meet with a terrible fate until there is someone to whom your Sword of Damocles can pass. So don't die, Suoh."

An ice floe. If Mikoto could just get to the edge, where the ice is thinnest, he can dip his hands in sweet cold water, drink his fill and soothe his skin. Maybe that would even be enough to find the bottom of the silent rage that feeds the fire he calls upon.

"Your loss," Mikoto mutters, watching his figure fade into the shadows cast by the awning above a massage parlour that has been closed since before he came to run these streets.

Two weeks ago, the two of them shared a moment of sexual intimacy when a scheduling mix-up put them in the same private changing room at an outdoor bathing facility down south. Mikoto walked in on Munakata with his back against the wall, legs spread and his hand on his dick.

Until then, Munakata was merely a figure in Mikoto's mind, an important chess piece he could not control. A chess piece with a voice, a voice that soothed his heart inexplicably.

Since the changing room incident, he's been unable to stop thinking about Munakata as a man; impressed against his will at Munakata's ability to seek his own pleasure wherever he liked, Mikoto began to wish he could provide some of that pleasure, in exchange for a few little pleasures of his own. Last week, he said as much to Munakata.

Just now, he received Munakata's answer. It does not surprise him.

What does surprise him is that the soft sound of Munakata's sabre rattling in its sheath is suddenly closer. That a pair of strong hands seizes his jacket just below the collar and pushes him up against the crumbling building behind him. That a covetous, hot tongue pries his lips open and snakes in past his teeth, flooding his mouth with the taste of expensive first-grade alcohol. That the decorative end of a deadly sabre pushes into the soft part of his belly as Munakata leans into his body, every muscle tensed.

Mikoto doesn't question the discrepancy between Munakata's words and his actions. It's probably some mind game that he doesn't have time to play, anyway. Or he's just had a few too many drinks tonight.

He lets the cigarette fall from his fingers, moves the sabre out of the way and pulls Munakata closer. That's how it starts.

Munakata finds him when he's alone and far from HOMRA and takes him away -- sometimes to sleazy hotels that stink of boiled cabbage, sometimes to abandoned buildings, sometimes to empty apartments with thin walls and mould in the tatami floors. He steps up behind Mikoto or appears by his side, or walks out right in front of him, takes him by the forearm and leads; Mikoto always follows even though he knows that at any time their destination could be the nearest SCEPTER4 jail.

They don't talk: not before, not during, and certainly not after. He still doesn't know what Munakata's laughter sounds like, but he can lose entire hours thinking about the sound of Munakata's pleasure. He can lose days reconstructing the circumstances of that pleasure.

He's kneeling on a ratty mattress in a famously haunted _haikyo_ resort, his fingers deep in Munakata's ass as his mouth fills with Munakata's come. He spits it out onto the floor and forces Munakata to kiss him just to watch him squirm.

He's up against a wall and Munakata's riding him, leaning backward as his knees thump the wall to the rhythm of their fucking. Mikoto stares down at his dick going in and out of Munakata's ass, smirks, catches Munakata's eye and finds him returning the smirk.

Mikoto likes it best to do him from behind, with a fistful of Munakata's silky hair and a handful of Munakata's cock. The way Munakata's back arches for him is better than any artwork he's ever seen, and the gasps from Munakata's lips better than any music. Like this, he always comes too quickly, so he doesn't do it often.

He's spread out on a kitchen counter that smells faintly of raw onions, Munakata's dick is so far up his ass he won't walk right for a week. He's looking forward to it; it's as close as he'll ever get to Munakata giving him something to remember him by.

One of the hotels has a bathtub large enough for two; Munakata makes Mikoto suck his cock underwater until Red Aura floods him on its own to protect him from drowning. The bathwater boils as they stagger out and finish their business on the tiles.

When Munakata fucks him, he never takes his uniform trousers off. It irritates Mikoto even though it shouldn't; they're not a couple, they make no promises and have no future. It shouldn't matter. It does matter. Mikoto has this feeling with no name -- a little bit of resentment, a little bit of grudging respect, a little bit of jealousy, and a little bit of love.

What Munakata feels is plain in his every glance and gesture. He hates Mikoto, enough to want to hurt him, but he doesn't enjoy either violence or conflict -- yet he knows full well that every time they fuck, he walks away with a piece of Mikoto's soul in his pocket. That's the harm he inflicts, with pleasure.

Mikoto doesn't know the origin of Munakata's loathing, so he can't assess its depth, but that is just as well, for he doesn't wish to know. He would like to know how Munakata keeps what they do from interfering with how he feels, but Munakata would never tell him, so he doesn't bother to ask.

Munakata guards his edges far too closely, and Mikoto has no patience.

Still, there are rare moments when Munakata's walls come down, his face relaxing, his arms tightening around Mikoto in embraces brimming with something like passion. His eyes focus on Mikoto's face and his fingers dance playful across Mikoto's skin. It's almost as though he forgets who they are, forgets what they are to each other, forgets the inevitability of their positions, and opens up the softer places in his heart, now for a single instant, now for a fleeting few.

Part of Mikoto wants to hurl forward, aiming at those softer places until one gives and lays Munakata open for him. He imagines flames licking the edges of a chunk of ice, smoothing them, turning white transparent.

It will never happen.

Munakata wields not ice but lightning, forged in clouds, far above the land where fire dwells beneath soft earth. Such lightning can spark a fire, but a fire can only burn.

And no fire can burn high enough to reach the clouds, not even low-hanging thunderclouds that paint the sky with shadows.

Some nights, Munakata simply deigns to burn with him, breaking away pocket-sized pieces of Mikoto's being to take home. Moments of true passion blossoming like stains on the fabric of time, unsightly and soon to be wiped away with a narrowing of the eyes or a finger gouging deeper into soft thigh-flesh than it needs to. Their time together is short, and sunrise is never late in coming.

In the daylight, he stands haughty and proud, composed and sombre, not a hair out of place and not a shadow of doubt across his brow. All edges, no clouds on his horizon, no fire that can touch his soul.

Munakata is no ice floe; he is a sword. And the thinnest edge of a blade is also the sharpest.

The edge with Mikoto's name on it is the sharpest of all.

One day, Mikoto will die upon it.

[end]


End file.
